tech-ed collisions

iLust, iBan, iTry, iHope, iReview

So this post can only be about one thing - the iPad. As a review, this isn't really going to be hot off the press and out as soon as the device itself. They have been around for a month or two now so are old news technology wise. For good or bad though, I walked into a store very soon after they arrived in Australia and they just happened to have three left so I bought one. In this post I am going to describe my experiences with it after owning one for several weeks.

When I first read about the iPad on the Web I must admit I wasn't really that taken with it. It just looked like a ridiculously over-sized iPhone and didn't appear to offer much more than its smaller stablemate (in fact, probably less).

Then I had the opportunity to play with one. Let me say there is a huge difference between reading about the iPad and having it in your hands. Unfortunately the one that I had to try out was a demo and there were none available for purchase. Here comes the iLust part. After trying it out for about fifteen minutes or so I was sold. I wanted one. At this time I was very fortunate to be attending a conference related to technology and education and it was great to hear the number of educational organisations that were really interested in the device and what potential it offered for education. These organisations were not simply jumping on a new hyped up device but were looking very seriously at whether or not it had the capability to support delivering better outcomes for their students. They were not seeing it just as a replacement technology but as a transformational one.

As a replacement technology however there are a number of benefits. From a very simple standpoint, as a parent I'd rather see my children carrying one of these around than a pile of textbooks and notebooks and/or a laptop weighing down their ridiculously oversized, overweight backpacks. A fairly trite example I know but all the same...

As a transformational technology, multi-touch, web-enabled, go anywhere devices offer so many new ways of exploring, learning and collaborating, with access to so much amazing information and great services. At about this time I was also reading about other organisations rejecting these types of devices unless they could effectively modify them and lock them down. There are some very compelling arguments put forward for doing so and it is very informative to listen to why such approaches are needed.

More locally we see a number of trials of iPads in schools, universities etc happening - educators are out there trying.

A disappointing aside however can be the media. I mostly read electronic media and it seems education is dammed if it does and dammed if it doesn't. I have seen posts criticising education departments for whatever approach they take (jumping on the bandwagon and having a go or working hard to provide a safe secure environment). They are never going to please everyone. However, the education system has many people passionate about education and passionate about making it relevant to the 21st Century and the world in which their students are growing up in. Let's hope they succeed. So, enough of the hype and big picture stuff - what about the device itself? Out of the box it offers some great features. Music, video, photos are all fantastic and what you would expect. The quality of the screen is great. The big improvers over the standard iphone applications though are the mail and calendar functions. They are fantastic. Email in particular is now fun to work with again.

If you are going to use the iPad more seriously (beyond entertainment) then you really need to consider some productivity apps. I downloaded the iWorks apps so I have Pages, Numbers and Keynote available. Now these are really stripped down versions of the desktop apps but for the price you would be foolish not to give them a go.

Pages works great for creating and reading documents on the go. The keyboard doesn't take all that long to get used to and after a few minutes effort you should be really competent in it. The lack of any tactile feedback creates a bit of a challenge but who knows what may happen in future improvements to this type of device (see this article for one possibility). The first thing I tried to do in Pages was review a document. To do so I wanted to highlight some excerpts of text but this is not possible (unless you make changes to the text itself). Pages on the iPad works great if you accept and can work within its limitations. I imagine it will only get better and the first version was just getting it out the door and onto the iPad. Keynote is good to for viewing presentations. I haven't really tried to create any serious ones but just playing with it gives me the impression that you could comfortably create some quite good ones.

Numbers was a bit of a disappointment for me. The interface just wasn't quite there and it seemed to 'clunky' to work with. Perhaps I didn't persist for long enough.

The Safari web browser looks great and works well for casual surfing of the Web. It really brings the Web to all parts of the house when at home and has been really useful in that respect. The iPad is far more mobile than a laptop so working in the kitchen, finding recipes, checking out what's on at the movies, television etc are now very convenient, as is access to all your favourite social networking applications.

It doesn't take long to discover the constraints though. You can't search within a web page (something I now realise I do quite often). No flash is a real issue (so Apple the entire Web really isn't available to you, despite what the ads say). Tabbed browsing is not there which slows things down. The good news however is you don't need to stick with Safari. I am now using iCabMobile which is looking to be a great browser. It is quite configurable, has tabbed browsing and you can search within a web page. A definite improvement over Safari.

iBooks is a great book reader. I haven't really got into electronic book readers but can quite easily imagine myself using this app quite regularly. The battery life is great. You really do get quite a few hours use out of it. I haven't timed it exactly but seem to have to recharge only every few days. It does take a while to recharge though.

Since this is a personal device for me rather than a work device (although I have been using it for work as it is very effective when mobile), I have put a few games on it and it is a good gaming platform. There are some really entertaining games out there that exploit the features of the device and this will undoubtedly get better as more games become available.

The Youtube app seems to be configured to your location which is really annoying. Featured, Top Rated etc all seem heavily biased to local content and I can't find any configuration options to change this (I hope this isn't what its going to be like in a 'filtered' world because I really dislike it - but that's a whole other story). I prefer, by default, to get global, not local content.

The Maps application is great - the increased size of the screen makes this a great interface to interact with.

Of course you can run your iPhone apps on it too. When run in standard resolution they look small on the screen but there is a x2 'button' that you can press to get into full screen mode. Some apps tend to look a bit ordinary when in this mode but overall they are ok.

Perhaps the best measure of how good the iPad is, is the takeup by the rest of the household. Our iPad is a really 'in-demand' device and everyone in the house enjoys using it. Its actually become a scarce resource now and I have to compete for access to it.

I (we) have the wifi only version and this seems to be good enough. Given the size of the device (ie I can't carry it around in my pocket or hand everywhere), almost all locations where I do go with it have wifi so I haven't felt compromised by not having the 3g version - after all, most phones now have reasonable web/data interfaces for when you are really mobile and need that sort of access.

The one thing that really annoys me about the iPad is the lack of a (front facing) camera. It would have made it a killer device. FaceTime on the iPad would be awesome - there's enough screen real estate to do quite effective group video conferencing. Deep down I just know I am going to be annoyed at being an early adopter with Apple again as I am sure the next version will have this in it. I just hope we see an addon camera available for 1st generation iPads.

So there you have it. Aside from the lack of a camera, for me this continues to be a great new device and one which I think is going to get even better as new apps come out that fully exploit it.

Filed under  //   Apple  
Posted June 30, 2010

on Snow Leopard

So I have had a week or so now with Snow Leopard and thought I might write some thoughts down on my experience with it so far. Firstly, the install was an absolute breeze - it just worked (but how many times do you hear that phrase anyway from Mac users). After reading about the integration with Exchange 2007 I was really looking forward to seeing Mail work with our office infrastructure and getting rid of Entourage. The installation process couldn't have been simpler in that regard. Since I was connected to our work network it just went off and found the mail server. Using Mail and iCal is great but.... Well actually it is quite good - seems much more efficient from an end user experience than Entourage but Mail and iCal are separate applications unlike Outlook or Entourage so I do have to have two apps open to work efficiently. A few things aren't quite there yet. In Outlook/Entourage we have a 'junk e-mail' folder that Exhange puts junk mail into. As it turns out, quite a lot of my junk mail is in fact real email that I need to respond to so I have to check this folder regularly but I can't see it any more. So for now I find myself having to get back into Entourage or an Outlook client to process some email that I can't otherwise see. On iCal I can't open other users calendars from our work environment which I can do (very quickly in Outlook and very, very slowly in Entourage). Setting privacy settings for meetings/appointments is problematic if I have multiple calendars open - just can't do it. Still... using Mail and iCal is generally much, much better than using Entourage. Another big plus is the new QuickTime Player. It's great to be able to create screen, audio and video recordings from it (especially screen recordings). One other thing that I was really looking forwards to is the use of the new trackpad gestures. Unfortunately it seems my Macbook Pro is too old for that and they are not supported. It has been really hard to (and I still can't) find any official information from Apple on exactly what models do support this feature. When you see the video of this feature it just seems made for a tablet Mac. The way the dock behaves now seems to be a bit nicer too. Anyway, that's it so far.

Filed under  //   Apple  

the week that was

so... not much to post about today but here's a few reflections. My iPod Touch is getting better all the time - the release of the iPhone has resulted in a steady stream of new apps that can be installed on the iPod too and with its networking capability its just getting better and better. I like the Facebook app and have tried a couple of Twitter clients (Twittelator and Twitterific, both of which have some annoying features but Twittelator's annoyances are far less intrusive). I went corporate and setup access to the company email which was extremely simple to do and works great - I should have done that ages ago. The remote control app is also another great little program if you use Macs. Browsing through the list of available applications I found a Wordpress client which I immediately installed only to find out later that this blog uses an older version of Wordpress which isn't compatible with it (bummer!). The most impressive app that I have seen so far though is Shazam, which listens to a few seconds of a song and guesses the title and artist and is incredibly accurate. Pity it only works on the iPhone as the iPod just doesn't have the obvious essential hardware! I attended one of those free lunch time seminars the other day where you get an opportunity to see (hopefully) a really interesting presentation and for the privilege, then have to listen to a sales pitch on the company's products. The presentation was on innovation and some recent research into the adoption and impact of new technologies. There were plenty of interesting stats thrown in and on the whole, I walked away with the impression that education, while not leading the way in its adoption and adaptation of new technologies, isn't a complete laggard either. The organisations and industries that are early adopters though are just streaking away from the rest of the field. There was some interesting discussion on the social impact of technologies like the Web though. Perhaps the one that had the biggest impact from the audience was when the speaker mentioned that around two years ago, you probably wouldn't mention (in polite circles) that you used online dating services yet last year, one in eight couples who got married in the US met online. This is a radical shift in the mainstream acceptance of the Web in the way that we socialise and it is incredibly important for organisations to understand what is happening here. From recollection, about 15% of organisations use social networking tools as an important component of their business models, ie using them to drive business, not simply for their employees to communicate. On social networking every now and then I post to Twitter mainly just to try to get a deeper insight into what it's all about and how to get benefits from it. I find that I generally post something if I am doing something a little different or looking at a technology. It seems a good way of connecting randomly with others who might be looking at the same technology. For example, through Twitter I have been able to find out some really interesting stuff about virtual worlds, which we are interested in here at work. Once in a while though, I have posted a more personal comment (ie feeling good, annoyed etc) and what seems to be the case is that these posts attract much more attention than anything else. I am guessing this all comes back to the use of the Web as a social tool. The implications of this are very important in the design of systems that we develop and our use of social networking tools in teaching and learning environments. I'd like to explore this a lot more deeply but am running out of time. Cheers, Jerry

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Filed under  //   Apple   general  

on iPhones, iTouch and lousy business models

Here's the obligatory post on the iPhone. At last its here and already there are a few around the office. It seems a few people from work joined the queues on Friday and bought themselves the ultimate in cool gadgets for the masses. Unfortunately I wasn't one of them but I have seen a couple of great impromptu demos! I have an iPod Touch so just cannot justify forking out for a new phone for a while so that will have to wait. Anyway, the other night when I got home and turned the TV on there was a story on one of the current affairs programs telling us how the iPhone is going to revolutionise education. While I love gadgets and can see plenty of potential I am not sure how practical this is just yet in the primary school classroom (where I think this story was pitched - I missed quite a bit of the story). Even with the DER it is hard to conceive how an iPhone could be given to every student in the class, and it would have to be every student! There just seems to be so many logistical and other issues to solve. What sort of plans would they be on, who pays for the phones, the plans etc, you would need chargers everywhere, what happens as the phones get lost/stolen/taken from kids (which they would) etc. What sort of training would be required and so on. Don't get me wrong - I would love to see technology such as this being used in classrooms around the country but doing so requires so much more thought than exploiting the hype around a new gadget. On to the iTouch and the business models employed by Apple. They make some cool technology but really irritate me when it comes to some of their approaches to business. Like many, I was an 'early adopter' for the iTouch. Our reward for that - pay up some extra cash to get the upgrade (which did have a few nice applications) to the software back at the beginning of this year. Now with the release of the 3G iPhone, there was another upgrade for the iTouch. There is a whole new raft of applications available now so I went to the Apple site to have a look, downloaded a few and then found out that they cannot run on my iTouch (should really read the fine print). So I paid for the software upgrade to enable them which, on the website had some great images of cool new applications - none of which actually come with the upgrade. The upgrade, at a glance, mostly seems to install an application that lets you install applications! Why Apple insists on charging these fees for minor upgrades that just annoy their most loyal fans I just don't know (I do really - PROFIT). So this time I am going to hold back for a while and not become an early adopter for the 3G iPhone, I might just wait for a few upgrades.

Filed under  //   Apple  
Posted July 16, 2008

iPhone 2.0 - and we're still waiting for the first one

From TechCrunch the news that Apple is making a number of announcements today for the iPhone. Support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is a big one on its own. I can just imagine the groans from IT/finance departments in organisations around the world (not here in Australia yet as we don't have the iPhone - but that's another story) who now have to deal with requests for iPhones in their companies. The other big news is Apple opening up its internal APIs and tools to 3rd party developers. A software developers kit (SDK) is available for writing apps on both the iPhone and iTouch (at least we have those here) at a price of US$99. The TechCrunch article describes some interesting application demos that are worth checking out. Applications that are developed will only be distributed through iTunes and while I am a fan of their technologies, I can't really say the same about some of their business models. So - what does this mean for those of us in the (Australian) education space.... Well we don't have iPhones yet which kind of takes the shine off any such announcements but as developers of niche services in a niche market, we really have to ask ourselves whether this mobile platform is one that we can afford to develop in or should we concentrate on more open and widely adopted mobile technologies (no matter how cool the iPhone looks). It is interesting to see this announcement in the same week that Google announced Google Gears for Mobile though. What was interesting for me about that announcement was that it will initially be available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile devices.

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Filed under  //   Apple  
Posted March 7, 2008

iTunes U

iTunes U has been around for some time now offering its services to universities. It is great to see a number of iTunes U resources being made available to the public. Here are a few examples indicating in a small way the breadth of stuff that is available:

  • MIT - OpenCourseWare and more
  • Broome Community College - physical therapist assistant program
  • University of South Florida - resources for k-12 students and teachers, PD for educators, and much more
There are many, many more resources. If you are an iTunes user, check it out on the iTunes Store. Cheers, Jerry.

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Filed under  //   Apple  

iPhone at last - well maybe at some point in the future

I think we all knew it was coming at some point but now that it's announced my first impression was that I can't wait until its available.  I have no idea how long that may be in this country at least but here is a link to the new iPhone.  It must be attracting huge interest as I had trouble accessing the Apple site.  Pity the poor parents who are going to have to fork out for one or more of these or put up with incessant pleas for it.

Filed under  //   Apple